To anyone who fancies as authentic a "heritage" experience as is now possible in the course of everyday life, I commend this excellent business, Evison's of Wisbech. It was the shopfront, of a type which once lined every British high street, that arrested my attention. I don't know if it quite qualifies as an "arcade" front, as there is no "island" display case, merely two entrance doors deeply recessed within the building. Shops used to live by their windows, but little importance is attached to the art of window-dressing these days. Often, where they are not obscured by stick-on vinyl "decals" or tatty advertisements for the week's bargains, shop windows give no more than a view of a row of checkout desks.
In the window I spotted a rather fetching brushed cotton shirt of that checked pattern found at its most prolific at equestrian events or sheepdog trials and often worn in combination with waxed jackets, tweed caps and green wellington boots. This, I thought to myself, would be just the thing to set off the smooth, tawny edifice of my corduroy coat ("jacket" is avoided by careful speakers of English except in the context of the tailoring trade) and would accord nicely with several ties that I own. £9.99 wouldn't break the bank either.
I pushed open the door and stared around.
Had I entered one of those "time warps" one used to hear about? Had I stepped through some spatial-temporal barrier and landed in a suburban draper's shop towards the end of the 1950s? If so, please God, never send me back. Mind you, shudder, this could be a branch of Stuckey's, circa 1961, and I might have come in for a pair of shorts for my PE kit. All around me were woollen cardies and long-sleeved winceyette nighties. Were petticoats or corsets to be found among these high-piled wares, perchance a liberty bodice? A drowsy numbness pained my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, and I reached out to steady myself against a stack of flannelette and brushed nylon sheets. A soft-footed assistant ...or perhaps I should say "shop walker"... approached.
"Men's wear upstairs, Sir".
At the top of the stairs my eyes instinctively turned up, looking for the miniature cable railway by which the counters would communicate with the central cashier, a trusted senior employee and typically a middle-aged spinster with a cup of tea and a Butter Osborne at her elbow. But no, it was not to be. This must, after all, be a shop of our world, where all things are flawed. Another assistant shimmered into view ...not, as one might have expected, a charmless adolescent, but an older gentleman in an immaculate pinstripe suit.
"Were you looking for something, or just browsing?"
I explained about the shirt. The man stepped behind a glass-topped cabinet filled with tiered drawers, but the shirt was eventually found among the floor-to-ceiling racks which lined the walls. The procedure came back to me in an instant.
"I'll need one with a 15½-inch collar", I said.
"Ah yes, you'll be a medium", said the man, assessing my build with practised eye "...yes (consulting the back of the cellophane wrapping) the medium has a 15½-inch collar".
Bloody right too. When I got it home the shirt was a perfect fit. Few men fasten their top buttons or wear ties these days, but I can't remember when I last bought a shirt by collar size. I know that shirts mostly come from Ceylon or Formosa these days, where the prevailing build is more narrow-boned, but where on earth do today's menswear shops get their sizes? I am manifestly a medium-sized person, but I haven't been able to wear a shirt labelled "M" for donkey's years. Even L is chancing it, and XL is by no means over-roomy.
The assistant led me to a desk and reached for a pad of "Cash Receipt" forms. After hand-writing the details of my purchase he tore off the top copy, retaining the other, which I think was yellow, in his drawer. Did he use a sheet of carbon paper? I can't remember, but like to think that he did. While he was doing this I complimented him on the beauty of his shop (I had somehow convinced myself, probably wrongly, that he was the proprietor) ..."like going back fifty years", I said. He told me that the shopfront was listed ...which rather disappointed me, as this means that its survival is "artificial". I was told to pay downstairs. This immediately reminded me of Foyle's bookshop in the old days, but at least I didn't have to return to the salesman to claim the shirt. Clutching my shirt and the chitty, I made my way down the discreetly creaking stairs to the cashier who, rather to my surprise, accepted payment by debit card. Well, it's a long way from TK Max ("cashier number five please"), where I am accustomed to buying shirts these days.
